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but there is no bleach in the laundry area. He could go out to buy bleach, or just clean the area as well as he could, and make up a story for Sara. Yes, that is what he’ll do. The stain is too small for her to notice right away. The bleach will need to wait for another day. There will be many stories to concoct for Sara and others. He realizes with a stark revelation, as if a bright light has been turned on in a black room, that his deception has only begun, despite his absolute innocence.
    Then he remembers the photo, his photo, still embedded in the memory of Heidi’s cell phone. A cold sweat rises on his neck, and tightness invades his chest. He feels a rumbling in his body, something new and beyond anything he’s ever felt. He knows he must again untie the plastic bags and retrieve the phone from her straw handbag.
    First the outer one, and then the inside one. He sees her face again. What can change in a few minutes? he wonders. Yet she looks paler, as if the Iranian sun has begun to recede from her skin.
    He pulls out the straw bag and removes the cell phone with the idea that later he will smash it into bits and distribute the scrap residue in the ocean. He reties the bag and stops.
    He needs a plan. He needs to think. He walks upstairs and stares out the window at the ocean. The dark clouds have passed and the absence of motion at the tops of the sand pines tells him the wind has died. The sun hangs white, low, and alone to the west. Sara will be on her way to her Long Island meeting. He doesn’t have much time, but his sense of logic and planning begin to return. He knowswhat he will do next, but first he washes the glass she used, returns it to the cabinet, and recorks the wine, which he leaves on the countertop. He stands at the top of the stairs, and then moves down toward the silvery bundle.
    He’s late getting to East Hampton Airport to pick up Sara. There’s been just too much to do, too much to think about. He needed to put things as they should be before she comes. As he drives, he remembers how they met. It was her father who introduced them at a year-end cocktail reception at Posner’s firm where her father’s investment company was a client.
    “Sara, this is Amos Posner, whose firm handles some of our overseas commodities business,” Jacob Auslander spoke as one hand pressured Amos’s elbow to turn.
    Amos pivoted his body away from the open bar without the glass of red wine he’d ordered and faced a very tall brunette with shoulder-length hair, dark eyes, and a clear, pale complexion. She was wearing a simple black cocktail dress with a strand of tiny pearls and matching earrings. He absorbed all of this in seconds, even before Jacob introduced his daughter Sara.
    “She’s a lawyer. Just moved back east from Chicago.”
    Jacob went on for at least another minute, but Amos wasn’t listening, only looking.
    “Don’t forget your wine,” she said breaking into their mutual concentration.
    Soon after they met, they discovered that she was coincidentally doing legal work for a British subsidiary of his firm. There was a chance meeting in London less than three months later. Three weeks after, they spent a weekend at Inverlochy Castle in Scotland and within six months they were married.
    And now it’s possible that the very survival of their marriage has come down to what’s happened today and what he’s done about allof it. He fights off a series of tremors that invade his hands, rubs sweaty palms on his pants, and wills himself to stay calm as he pulls up to the terminal entrance.
    No one stands in front of the doors. He’s late. The clock on the dash reads twenty past, yet she should be there. Should have already dropped the rental off. He leaves the car and steps a few feet inside the small terminal, which is nearly empty, but doesn’t see her. Back in his car, he reaches for his cell phone to call, but a message is waiting. Sara called. Why didn’t he hear the ring? Yet the reason is